Only the state government could have brought murder charges, and Mississippi had not pursued the case. After her sons murder, Mrs. Chaney sued five restaurants in Meridian for racial discrimination. . But despite this and another confession, no Southern jury would ever convict anyone for the actual murder of Chaney or his colleagues. As an adult, she did not hear white Mississippians call for justice for her father's murder until she was in her 40s. Two white boys were killed, so they did something about the killing of my child who was with them., Jamess sister Barbara Dailey told The Courier Post of Cherry Hill, N.J., in 2005 that her mother had at first not understood the civil rights movement. We began in the woods about half a mile up the road from my parents house. Ben also has vivid memories of Schwerner, his brothers murdered colleague. We dont have anything on that.. In 1967 prosecutors managed to convict seven of the men for conspiring to deny the civil rights of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. The body of James Chaney was a "mangled mass". Editors Note: This is an excerpt from John Blakes 2004 book Children of the Movement about James Earl Chaney, one of three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi 50 years ago this month. Growing up, Lewis faced her share of difficulties in Meridian, Miss., where the public swimming pools didn't integrate until 1969 and public schools didn't fully integrate until a year later. Obbie told me he started doing tours years ago. "It was the 31st of August in 1962 that 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. In June 2005, Killen was finally prosecuted by the state of Mississippi. James Earl Chaney had been ambushed and murdered along with Schwerner and another civil rights volunteer, Andrew Goodman. She was fired from her job and could not find other work. We turned down Road 747, where a white sign at the highway intersection advertises Mount Zion, just about two or so miles down this country road. If you never cleanse yourself of this and own it, he continued, its just there.. He was a security guard at a mall near her home. Nothing but cowards. daughter. "I didn't know much about my dad," she said. She says she even occasionally saw the man accused of murdering her father, former Sheriff Lawrence Rainey. One day last fall, I finally succeeded at getting insidethe hours of operation are a mere suggestion. As the federal government launched a massive 44-day manhunt, Rita Schwerner, Michaels widow, said that the reason the widespread search was happening at all was because two of the three men were white. Black people were in control. It took us so long to realize who he was. Years later, when she finally sat down with her grandmother, "I was able to get a whole wealth of information," she said. There was a period where I felt like I hated mankind. Obituary. In 2005, after an eight-day trial, a Neshoba County jury convicted Killen on three counts of manslaughter. He was the first born son to Ben Chaney Sr. and Fannie Lee. Before and since that time, her mother has never talked about her father. They also became the subject of several documentary and dramatic treatments, including the 1988 film Mississippi Burning., If it had been my son alone, Mrs. Chaney said in 1967, nothing would have been done. His mother, declaring that she would not lose another son, organized a letter-writing campaign to the parole board. Word about Mount Zions destruction traveled to a Freedom Summer training Schwerner was helping conduct at Western College for Women, in Ohio (now Miami University). They are the stewards of this nations civil rights, and I fear that our history might die with them. In April 1970, one of Bens friends asked him to accompany him while he visited a relative in Florida. Cementing his status as The Nicest Guy in Rock, Dave Grohl pulled a 16-hour shift over the weekend cooking food for 500 homeless people in Los Angeles. Photos of Little Ben Chaney, shattered by grief at his brothers memorial service, would make their way across the world. The infamous poster circulated after the three civil rights workers were missing shows Chaney staring at the camera with a stoic, almost glazed, look on his face. He was a clerk in the prison library where he consumed books such as Malcolm Xs autobiography, George Orwells Animal Farm and various biographies. That was the first time most people would see Ben, the younger brother of James Earl Chaney, one of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Mississippi's then-governor claimed their disappearance was a hoax, and segregationist Sen. Jim Eastland told President Johnson it was a "publicity stunt.". Four years later, he returned to Mississippi to help in an investigation into the suspicious deaths of several young black men found dead in Mississippi jail cells. She couldnt miss someone she never knew. CNN It looks like Kanye West has a new "boo." The rapper/mogul posted on his verified Instagram account a screenshot of a. ", Lewis works as a nurse/counselor with abused children ages 12-17, at The Crossings, a 60-bed facility that is part of the Alliance Health Center. 3:46 PM. The search for them seized the worlds attention, ending only with the discovery of their bodies in an earthen dam near the town of Philadelphia on Aug. 4. He knew what would happen if they got caught., When searchers eventually found his brothers body buried in an earthen dam, Ben says he still refused to accept that his brother was dead. James said, I can probably do something for myself and help somebody else, she recalled. I guess its a thing guys just dont talk about.. There are also photographs of the exhumation of the victims' bodies and subsequent autopsies, along with aerial photographs of the burial site, according to an announcement from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. People walked up to him to offer comfort, but he shooed them away. They spit on her and even hit her. James Chaney left behind an infant daughter, Angela, in 1964. The man who shot Chaney complained that he hadnt gotten to kill one of the white men: You didnt leave anything but a nigger. Then the Klansmen loaded the bodies back into the station wagon and drove away. Another time they found him passed out naked in his trailer, covered in feces. Now a computer consultant in New York, Sullivan chuckles at the figure Ben cut when he started going around New York in his dashiki and sandals to tell black students to get organized. Accountability for the crimes had been minimal. Nate Tinner-Williams. This article appears in the May 2022 print edition with the headline Tour Guides to a Tragedy.. He never got to meet his 11-day-old daughter. Birth of James Cheney. Pleasant Cemetery, Pulaski County, Kentucky. He let them fix their car before arresting them and taking them to the county jail, booking Chaney for speeding and holding Schwerner and Goodman for investigation. Lewis, who rarely grants interviews, will attend Monday's trial of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, accused of plotting the killings. ", She finds fulfillment in working with youth, helping others who need help. One mission came in 2005 when she attended the trial of Edgar Ray Killen and stared at the Klan leader identified as having orchestrated the killings of her father, Goodman and Schwerner near Philadelphia, Miss., decades earlier. From this point, the details diverge depending on whose version of events you hear. He said he has reservations about his office taking on more responsibility when it comes to formalizing the civil-rights tours. Chaney played for Florida State University with . Personal Life. A week into the project, Klansmen murdered three young civil-rights workersJames Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwernerwho had come to investigate the Ku Klux Klans burning of Mount Zion United Methodist Church, where my stepdad grew up worshipping. He was also diagnosed with dementia, later to pass away. As the violence and heroism of that summer made headlines, Johnson ordered his attorney general to "write me the (expletive) best, toughest voting rights act that you can devise," Watson said. The red-brick building sits a ways back from the road, accessible by a semicircle driveway. Hes seen gloating Southern lawmen escape conviction in his brothers death. Thats when death became real to me.. E., as she called James, never came back.. Between dyin and lyin and keep Ben Chaney trudges through the snow in a wind-swept cemetery in Meridian, Mississippi, until he finally reaches the place. A native of Meridian, he was once suspended from high school for wearing an NAACP badge. You gotta line up to do anything.. James Chaney was born James Earl Chaney on May 30th, in 1943. Any time she gets near the cemetery where her father is buried, a quiet spirit overwhelms her soul, she said. To me, they were the main perpetrators for evil in the world.. Not one person, however, has ever been successfully convicted of murder in the deaths of the three civil rights workers. It was likely that the experience James Chaney gained while working in Dorbacker's hotel helped bring him to Washington, D.C., sometime between the summer of 1860 and his enlistment in the Union army in the summer of 1863. The bedT vas in a part.i&lly deocmposed statce and opan&d tree tho This is supposed to be back before the 60s, you know, and all that happened in the 60s, she said. But I know that Im angry over the fact that my brother is dead and no one has been brought to justice for his death., He has no interest in trying to discern the mindset of the men who killed his brother. But I would like them to know that I think they're cowards. As law-enforcement and military officials searched the surrounding area for the three victims, they came across the bodies of two Black men who had gone missing earlier that year. His drunken antics delayed many a production. Later, when he was 15 years old, he joined high school. So did James Chaney, a Black CORE staffer and native of Meridian whod been working with Schwerner that summer. January 23, 1957. I told you that before we got married, Cleo said to Jewel. But she would never say a word about who she was. Klansmen returned later that night and set fire to Mount Zion, burning it down completely. He knew they would kill. The pandemic put these tours on hold for a while, but even before COVID, they were irregular, and could be found only by word of mouth. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. . But Ben never found his footing at Walden. He had been out many other times before. Where nobodys hungry James Chaney first used this unique format of personal dialogue to . He was a chubby guy who loved baseball and nicknamed James the bear and Ben the cub. The one thing I remember about Schwerner is that if you were in a room with him and he was talking and you didnt know he was white, you would swear he was black, Ben says. All 3 died helping others - all three witnessed the power and love of . The third man, James Chaney, was a local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. 1700 1700. Its not as easy for her as it once wasin 2010, McDonald lost her right leg to a bacterial infection. When Cleo popped into the kitchen, he told me that it was always in the plan to return. The FBI on June 29, 1964, began distributing this picture of civil rights worker James E. Chaney, who disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964. The violence stuck with him. I dont think a conversation would have changed him. Four white people were shot to death and two wounded during a murder spree that crossed Florida, North and South Carolina. Prison, he says, transformed him. James Chaney said he's the type of guy who knows when his time is up. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. This fall, on one of my trips back home, I decided to talk with him about that past. Special thanks to Rohan Brown and Meagan T. for Bens name helped him win support on the outside. Delivered by FeedBurner. The murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Miss., inspired the movie Mississippi Burning. Even in this boom time of national memorialization of Black civil-rights history, in Philadelphia, tours like Obbie Rileys are the only real way to connect to the dark truth of our past. "It wasn't until later I learned that he had been in Ohio training" when she was born, then traveled to Mississippi the day before he was killed. . Ben sat on his front porch that afternoon and waited for his brother to return. If I had a daughter I would have full confidence in referring her to Dr Chaney. She is the only child born to any of the three civil rights workers whose killings by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964. Join Facebook to connect with James Chaney and others you may know. In 2004, he was still alive, and living nearby. This is the fourth or fifth time the grave has been desecrated, he says. He says about 12 of them are still alive. "My fear is I'm going to lose her before I find out everything I want to know about my dad," she says. William Cheney. 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. James Earl Chaney's siblings forced to flee home after his murder, Brother of slain activist says he hated white people, No one has ever been convicted in the murder of the civil rights workers, Chaney's daughter talks about dad she never knew. He served in both the First World War and Second World War. Earlier today on Twitter, a Black Catholic priest commemorated the Freedom Summer murders. The multiracial group of residents who attended that meeting continued to meet regularly afterward. He still has his Southern accent. (Nate Palmer for The Atlantic) . We pulled out of the long gravel driveway and drove into history. The previously sealed materials - dating from 1964 to 2007 - were transferred to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History from the Mississippi attorney general's office in 2019. 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